Back to the Secular Decade. If there's one thing to admire about Penn Jillette, it's that he's transparent about what he really thinks. If only more "new atheists" were so transparent, then the public might get a more realistic picture of what Faircloth's "Secular Decade" would really look like.If Casey had been paying attention, he wouldn't have to look very far. Many European countries are well on their way to being truly secular societies. In the Netherlands, for example, only 34% of the population believes in God [Demographics of atheism]. If the New Atheists were to succeed in America then most people would abandon religion and life would go on pretty much as usual except that the society would become more rational, more understanding, and more tolerant. Creationism would become a joke, gays could marry, and women would have the right to choose. That's what's happened in the Netherlands and many other civilized countries.
Photo Credit: Amsterdam Tourism & Convention Board
For proponents of intelligent design, James Shapiro's constant dancing in the DMZ between Darwin and design can be frustrating. On the one hand, Shapiro is as dismissive of Darwinism as any ID proponent. On the other, he constantly gives public notice that he is not on the side of ID. And yet, methinks he protests too much.This got a response from Shapiro that has now been posted on Evolution News & Views ["Is James Shapiro a Design Theorist?": James Shapiro Replies]. Here's what Shapiro says ...
What is wrong with "dancing in the DMZ" between intelligent design (as articulated by Michael Behe and others) and neo-Darwinism? Are these two positions the only alternatives? I doubt it. That is why my 1997 article in Boston Review on evolution debates was called "A Third Way." What Dembski calls the "DMZ" (i.e. a zone free of futile conflict) is the place where the real evolutionary science is taking place. I am proud to be there, and I see that an increasing number of people are joining me when they realize that natural genetic engineering, horizontal DNA transfer, interspecific hybridization, genome doubling and symbiogenesis provide solutions to problems recognized to be intractable under the limitations of conventional evolutionary thinking.Clear as mud. There's one thing I know for sure: horizontal DNA transfer etc. are perfectly compatible with today's evolutionary thinking. If Shapiro is wrong about this—and he is— then maybe he's also misleading us about his belief in intelligent design creationism.
[Hat Tip: Bad Astronomy]
Back in the days of newsgroups (last century) the howlers in talk.origins developed a running joke about irony meters. They were always being fried by outrageous comments from the anti-science creationists. New, more powerful, irony meters were needed every few months.In July 2011, a widely-reported cheating scandal erupted in school systems in and around Atlanta, Georgia. State investigators found a pattern of “organized and systemic misconduct” dating back for over ten years. One-hundred-and-seventy-eight teachers, and the principals of half of the system’s schools, aided and abetted students who were cheating on their tests. Top administrators ignored news reports of this cheating: a New York Times story described “a culture of fear and intimidation that prevented many teachers from speaking out.”Let's think about the 178 teachers in schools around Atlanta, Georgia. It's pretty safe to assume that the vast majority of those teachers are god-fearing Christians and most of them don't accept evolution.
Nor was this an isolated incident. In a feature on school testing, CBS News reported the following: “New York education officials found 21 proven cases of teacher cheating. Teachers have read off answers during a test, sent students back to correct wrong answers, photocopied secure tests for use in class, inflated scores, and peeked at questions then drilled those topics in class before the test.”
With such prominent and recent instances of cheating among students and teachers today, one would expect a concerted effort to articulate and promote the value of honesty in our schools. Yet school programs regarding academic integrity consist of little more than a patchwork of vaguely-stated prohibitions and half-hearted responses. Our schools vacillate between routine neglect and a circle-the wagons reaction if the problem boils over into a public media scandal. There is little consistency, coherence, or transparency in many school policies.
The most likely reason is that the educators involved do not believe that anyone has made a free choice to cheat or that cheating is an ethical issue.
Chalk another one up to the high cost of evolutionary psychology and related trends.
It's true that we should not restrict our definition of life to things that can self-reproduce. It's also true that we should not restrict our definition to things that reproduce badly (e.g. mutation/variation). I can easily imagine living things that could reproduce perfectly—they just wouldn't evolve by any mechanism we currently recognize.
Life is like pornography [I know it when I see it]. In the words of US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart,I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
xxx, the religious wacko who owns and runs this site, blames all the world’s ills, including Hitler and the nazis, on Darwin, atheists, and material evolutionists.The comment has been removed.
To see the truth about Hitler and the nazis, see these XXXXXXX:
XXXXXX is a LYING, arrogant, bloviating, sanctimonious, ignorant, uneducated, abusive, delusional god zombie.
See this site for a lot more about XXXXX:
Now, this vandalism of a site wholly unrelated to the matters debated at UD (and tied onwards to a hate site that exploits Google’s freedom of comment policies), was evidently in response to my having posted here at UD, matters linked to the well-known history of ideas roots of Hitler’s thought. I therefore suggest that onlookers examine the Weikart lecture and a discussion of a key clip from Mein Kampf that demonstrated the Darwinist-Haeckelian frame of thought, that beyond reasonable doubt strongly shaped Hitler’s thinking, speech and behaviour. (Those needing documentation on Hitler’s actual attitude to and intentions for the Christian Churches, can look at the recently released Nuremberg investigatory documents here. If after seeing these documents and the like, someone still insists on trying to claim Hitler was a Christian etc etc, s/he is delusional and/or willfully deceitful.)Furthermore, the behavior of this "vandal" is exactly what "kairosfocus" expects.
As they say, a tree is known by its fruits, and draws sustenance from its roots . . .Every atheist blogger gets far worse comments from Christians on a regular basis. Most of us get harassing emails every single day and the authors usually identify themselves as devout Christians doing God's work. These same Christians don't hesitate to send threatening messages to our colleagues and family members in an effort to silence us. Some of the Christian kooks are so dangerous that they have been arrested by police and are currently under forcible confinement in a mental health institution.
(In addition, a note on “blaming the world’s ills.” The likes of this hate-driven commenter will not appreciate or accept that a Bible-believing Christian will hold that much of what ails our world traces to our common challenge of being finite, fallible, morally fallen and too often ill-willed. Hence, our common need for recognition of our moral plight, repentance, forgiveness and moral-spiritual transformation through the gospel. Slander-laced strawmen and scapegoats are ever so much more easy to set up and ignite through irresponsible rhetoric that then clouds, polarises and poisons the atmosphere.)
That refusal to be responsible over a moral hazard closely tied to the Darwinist, evolutionary materialist frame of thought, and that refusal to acknowledge well-established historical facts that are inconvenient to the new atheist agenda are tellingly informative.
The pattern of obsessive, self-justifying, nihilistic hate, stalking, slander, Internet vandalism and abuse is even more informative about an unfortunately significant subset of the New Atheist movement and the danger its patent extremism poses. (After this sort of web vandalism, and worse, can any reasonable person doubt why moderation is necessary to maintain a reasonable tone at UD and elsewhere?)
Ironically, the very conscience benumbed self-justifying by smearing scapegoats that this sort of behaviour demonstrates on the small scale, is what — when such attitudes attained state power — led to the utter breakdown of morality on the grand scale that over 100 million ghosts from the past century tell us never to forget.
Can any reasonable person doubt that had a commentator like the above the power to do as he wished and get away with it, he would do me and my family further harm?
It is time for the New Atheist advocates of evolutionary materialism to take a serious look at what they have been enabling by their intemperate writings and attitudes.
The God helmet is used by Michael Persinger in his neuroscience "research." When you put on the helmet it makes you see God. It's just one of many illusions that supposedly reveal the presence of a supernatural being. Of course it has nothing to do with the content of this post.
This is an amendment that is a sense of the Senate. It is a sense of the Senate that deals with the subject of intellectual freedom with respect to the teaching of science in the classroom, in primary and secondary education. It is a sense of the Senate that does not try to dictate curriculum to anybody; quite the contrary, it says there should be freedom to discuss and air good scientific debate within the classroom. In fact, students will do better and will learn more if there is this intellectual freedom to discuss. I will read this sense of the Senate. It is simply two sentences—frankly, two rather innocuous sentences—that hopefully this Senate will embrace: "It is the sense of the Senate that—The original amendment was drafted by Philip Johnson in consultation with other fellows of the Discovery Institute.
(1) good science education should prepare students to distinguish the data or testable theories of science from philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science; and
(2) where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy, and should prepare the students to be informed participants in public discussions regarding the subject.
It simply says there are disagreements in scientific theories out there that are continually tested.
The Conferees recognize that a quality science education should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science. Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society.Taken at face value, these statements seem to provide an excellent opportunity for science teachers to explain how religion distorts science. They would provide legal justification for teachers who want to describe how religious views conflict with science and why scientific facts, such as evolution, generate so much controversy among religious Americans.
1. In American legislatures, it's normal that completely irrelevant material is inserted into bills.
The C.R.E.A.T.E. (Consider, Read, Elucidate the hypotheses, Analyze and interpret the data, and Think of the next Experiment) method is a new teaching approach that uses intensive analysis of primary literature to demystify and humanize research science for undergraduates. Our goal is to use the real language of science—the journal article—as an inroad to understanding “who does science, how, and why?” At the same time, we wish to help students (1) experience authentic processes of science, in particular discussion/debate about experimental data and their interpretation (including ‘grey areas’), (2) recognize the creativity and open-ended nature of research, and (3) see the diversity of people who undertake research careers (i.e. not just the genius/geeks of popular culture). As a complement to teaching based on textbooks, which tend to oversimplify the research process, C.R.E.A.T.E. teaching focuses on on authentic published work--peer reviewed journal articles—with students reading either series of papers produced sequentially from individual labs or series of papers from different labs focused on a single line of research.Here's an example based on Pattern formation during regeneration in planaria.
By reading/analyzing a set of papers published in series from a single lab, students experience the evolution of research projects over a period of years. Using newly-developed C.R.E.A.T.E. pedagogical tools, that encourage multiple approaches to the material (concept mapping, sketching, visualization, transformation of data, creative experimental design) students gain deep understanding of the methods (and biological content/principles) that underlie each individual experiment of the paper. In class, we emphasize scientific thinking--focusing on understanding both why and how each part of the study was done, by examining the hypotheses underlying each aspect of the study, and analyzing/discussing the data represented in each figure and table. Students learn to interpret complex data, draw conclusions, debate interpretations, and re-represent data (e.g. represent tabled data in graphic form) to aid understanding. Content knowledge is reviewed as students consider the principles underlying the techniques used, as well as the overall context of the scientific question being addressed (e.g. a module focused on regeneration would likely include review multiple aspects of cell division, cell differentiation, gene expression and stem cells, drawing on information students learned in other classes and helping them to apply it in a real-world research situation). C.R.E.A.T.E. students thus learn a variety of transferable learning skills that can be applied to complex scientific reading they do in the future. Students design their own proposed followup experiments at several points in the semester, and debate each other’s proposed studies in a classroom exercise modeled on activities of bona fide scientific grant panels. Such discussions reveal the research process to be openended, with multiple branch points or possible “next directions to go;” thus much less linear and predictable than many students expect. Late in the process, students generate a short list of questions for paper authors that are sent as an email survey to each author (not simply the PI). Responses from multiple authors provide unique behind-the-scenes insight into “the people behind the papers,” humanizing the research experience and showing researchers to be complex individuals much like the students themselves.
[Hat Tip: Sandra Porter at Discovering Biology in a Digital World: Learn how to use scientific articles in education at the C.R.E.A.T.E. June workshop]
The thread connecting these examples of human design is that each one is an analogy to biological evolution, from which evolution may be better understood by laypersons. Now by posting new examples like this, I realize that they may all be stolen by the “intelligent design” (ID) creationists to argue against evolution. My view on ID follows that most clearly expressed in the 2005 court judgment from the Pennsylvania Kitzmiller v. Dover case: “The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory.” Of course a few scientists have written in defense of evolution and against ID nonsense in the classroom, the most strident of whom is Richard Dawkins. I now add my voice in support, as in his final interview with Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens lamented “It’s the shame of your colleagues that they don’t form ranks and say, ‘Listen, we’re going to defend our colleagues from these appalling and obfuscating elements.’”I know Chris and I can assure you that his upcoming posts will be provocative and informative.
So into the breach, I add my voice with some new arguments, after this small bit of throat-clearing. I will try to avoid being derivative as I come armed with my own capacity for inquiry, insight, and argument. My examples will show how ID concepts force the gerrymandering of human design history, and surround it with mystical borders to make their claims. The individual steps in human design are small, slow and absolutely require the intellectual imprinting of lessons by trial and error. Students who are led to think falsely about human design, or any complexity as having mystical origins are harmed by the diminishment of their own aspirations of creativity. We all need to understand how small steps and tools lead to human creativity and any object of complexity. I will reveal these small steps and show, where I can, the failures that led to success.
1. That concentration is far below the concentration where effective binding can occur but the idea seems to be that the micoRNAs are contained in small vesicles that subsequently fuse with liver cells and deliver the rice microRNA to the cytoplasm where it can inhibit translation of specific mammalian RNAs. It's difficult to see how one could get an effective concentration of plant microRNA in one of these mammalian cells.
Zhang, L., Hou, D., Chen, X., Li, D., Zhu, L., Zhang, Y., Li, J., Bian, Z., Liang, X., Cai, X., Yin, Y., Wang, C., Zhang, T., Zhu, D., Zhang, D., Xu, J., Chen, Q., Ba, Y., Liu, J., Wang, Q., Chen, J., Wang, J., Wang, M., Zhang, Q., Zhang, J., Zen, K., and Zhang, CY. (2012) Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA. Cell Research 22:107–126 [PubMed] [doi:10.1038/cr.2011.158]
An important correction to several of the figures in this paper has also been published.
Zhang et al. (2012) Corrigendum [doi:10.1038/cr.2011.174]
This month's Carnival of Evolution (43rd version) is hosted by The EEB & Flow, a blog written by a large group of people interested in evolution and ecology [Carnival of Evolution #43]. The post was written by Marc Cadotte [Cadotte Lab], a professor in the Department of Evolution & Ecology right here at the University of Toronto.You no longer need to ponder the mysteries of life, travel the globe making observations, or running complex experiments to test hypotheses; everything you want to know about evolution today can be found by reading the monthly installments of the Carnival of Evolution!
The first installment of 2012 (or is this the last of 2011?) offers a great smattering of many different aspects of current evolutionary understanding. These 26 posts cover many of the major areas of research that define current evolutionary biology.
